Cauldwell's Conundrum

Summary: Felix Cauldwell is determined to change the galaxy with his equation for near-instantaneous space travel, he just didn't count on the baddies, blasters, and crazy babe aiming for him because of it.

Felix Cauldwell of the Helix 7

The
Hybridian Way was the oldest – and now the emptiest – space way in the galaxy.
At one point it had cut the straightest path from the mineral rich moons of
Centauri Trill straight to Felina Four at the heart of the aging Silver Empire. It had
been an astral highway fit for kings and queens (and all variations thereof in
the big, wide universe) with the planet Hybridia sitting like a crown jewel at
its center.

But
no more.

The main sun of the Sigma System had gone super nova several hundred
years ago now, igniting a chain reaction in its lesser satellites that blasted the whole system to bits and covered the Way with chunks of space
debris too thick and chaotic to navigate. The cut was clean, severing the vital
artery that had empowered Felina Four and its vassal systems and
leaving them to wither up in their now cut off corner of the Milky Way.

Hybridia did better than its trade partner. True, it was no longer a prosperous Way station between two wealthy parties, but it was still a thriving hub all on
its own. And with the Silver Empire no longer controlling the technology
market, Hybridia and
its unique flora, where metals like iron and copper could literally grow on
trees, soon became the biggest creator and
exporter of mechanical goods and cutting edge technological designs.

Felix
Cauldwell was too young to remember any of this. Heck, his great-great-great-grandfather
would have been too young. But in the short months that he'd been working on
the transport ship Helix 7, Felix had heard a lot about the
Hybridian Way's history. More than he had ever wanted to know if he was being
honest...

Not that I really have a choice in the
matter, he thought as he rolled his eyes down in the stocky hauler's humming engine room.

“So
the Empress Falaa-" Cor was still going on as he hooked his datapad into
the secondary systems that made up the walls of the engine room and linked up.
"-the strongest, toughest, most gorgeous femme to ever walk the Violet Moons
of Scandalor, calls up every able-bodied male in her army and sticks ‘em in the
middle of the Hybridian Way as a blockade. Right
outside Hybridia’s front door." He held up a finger as the pad gave a trill to signify link up was complete.

Cor
went on like he hadn't heard. "The Mavericks met her there a'course. Their
two armies filled the sky of Hybridia so that when you looked up, all ya saw
were the underbellies of a thousand different ships stretchin’ from one edge of
the horizon to the other.”

The
twenty-four-year-old Earth-born man snorted, not believing a word of it. “And just
where, exactly, did she even find that many men, Cor?”

The
older mechanic, a stocky Hybridian male named Cor’althan with short-cut gray-brown hair and a metallic sheen over similar eyes, just smiled at the younger crewer. “Well, if ya believe the tales that she was a raven-haired goddess
slummin’ it in the mortal planes, then she just had to walk down the street and
let the folks lay eyes on her. But myself personally-” He pressed a falsely
modest hand to his broad chest as if his opinion was such a small thing in the
grand scheme of things really. “-am a big fan of the fact that she had just
conquered the outer edge of the Sumsuma Expanse, not to mention had her late
husband’s army at her fingertips.”

Felix
nodded, shaking black hair out of his eyes when the motion disturbed them, only
half listening as he opened a panel on the protective shell that housed the engine
itself. The air temperature controls in the starboard side passenger rooms had
started malfunctioning during the last sleep cycle and some of the occupants
had complained. The Helix's captain, Skellenisti
Torrik – a lizard-like native of Skalorne – had ordered him and Cor to find and
fix the problem.

"Right,
right," Felix mumbled as he poked around the different connections to make
sure they were solid. "Whathisname, the King of Bexuli." He frowned
as he finished his little inspection. "Looks like the wiring's fine here,
Cor. What about on your end?" he asked over his shoulder.

Cor
just sighed in exasperation, completely ignoring Felix's question. "Bexuli
don' have kings and they've never even heard of Falaa. Stars kid, it's like ya
don't e'en listen," he mumbled before adding in a louder voice, "She
married the Silver Prince, that guy that ran the Silver Empire. You may have
heard of it; big empire, lasted two and a half million solar cycles before that pesky asteroid field sliced up the Way and we lots all contact. Ringin' any bells
there, kid?"

Felix
didn't answer as he pulled his own scanner out of the sling attached to the dark green chest plate that protected him from stray currents and heated
metal and connected it to the engine housing. He didn't look up as he waited
impatiently for it to tell him if the Helix
7's compressor was causing the problem or not, simply glared at it with
green eyes that had been dulled by too little sleep in the past few lunar
cycles.

He
didn't need to look up to know Cor had rolled his eyes at him. "Anyway," he went on without any encouragement,
"when Prince Whatshisname went and kicked the bucket, Falaa got the whole
shebang. The empire, her own system of Scandalor, an' all those lil planets her
late husband had conquered before doin' her the great service of dyin' and all."

"How
nice of him," Felix muttered as he scrolled through the scanner's engine
report. He didn't see any breaks in the coolant lines...

Cor
made a noise in the back of his throat but didn't seem to notice his audience's
lack of enthusiasm. "Oh sure, considerin' he was a stiff-necked,
hard-hearted, cheating-slime excuse for a man it was the least he could do." He
snorted as if he couldn't believe anyone would ever treat a woman like Falaa so
callously. "Seriously, I wouldn't blame her if she really did kill the sonuva glitch in the
end."

Felix
realized he had been staring at the same section of the engine report for the
past two minutes as his mind wandered over his own problem, the one that kept
him up at night. He shook himself out of it. "You're getting pretty
defensive over a woman that wasn't even a Hybridian, Cor." He pointed out,
hoping Cor hadn't noticed his absent mindedness as he thumbed down on the
report and tried to focus.

Cor
leaned his shoulder against one of the pipes next to him as he surveyed the
reports his own scanner was giving him. Felix knew from experience that the
pipes were steaming hot, but Cor didn't even flinch as his techno-organic body
absorbed the intense heat and processed it as extra energy that was funneled into his static field.

"Well
her taste in men improved after that," he admitted as he frowned at the small,
square screen set into the face of the bulky scanner in front of him and then,
seeing nothing useful, disconnected it from the support systems and shoved the
scanner back into one of his many mechanic's pockets.

Cor
nodded. "Her second husband was one a'those fancy kings from the southern
continent or sumthin' like that. Don't remember who he was exactly since he
didn't do scrap in the long run. Falaa's the one everyone remembers when it
comes down to it." He looked up and grinned crookedly as he remembered
something. "Rumor has it she was the great-sumthin' granddame of my late empress.
She was one of those peculiar southern folks too ya know, but dang was she sumthin' to see-”

He
was cut off as Felix expelled a loud sigh laced with frustration and shoved a hand
through his dark hair.

Cor
stopped and stared at him. "I've seen that
look before," he muttered at his young friend. "What's the matter? Is the
regulator busted? Cuz' I don't care what
Scales says, we'll have to stop for a new one right quick before the engine
housing overheats and slags itself-”

Felix
yanked his oversized work gloves off his hands and pinched at the bridge of his
nose before waving Cor off with the other. "No," he muttered,
suddenly sounding caught between disappointment and exhaustion. "It's not that.
I was just-" He hesitated before repeating, "I was just thinking
about something else."

Felix rubbed at his aching eyes and nodded.
"But it's fine," he added too quickly to be believable. "I'll
work through it," he mumbled. "Eventually."

Cor
watched him another moment. That wasn't what he was worried about. Felix was
bright, he had no doubts about that. He definitely surpassed his race's
standards of intelligence, but Cor had noticed that the human also had the
tendency to be a little too...single-minded when it came to his pet project.

"Ya
known I'd be happy to look over what ya got." Cor offered, no slouch when
it came to mathematics and mechanics himself. Being part of a semi-organic,
semi-technological race had advantages like that. "Maybe I can help ya out.”

Felix
immediately straightened up where he'd been slouching against one of the system
consoles. "No," he said firmly. "I mean thanks," he added,
not quite convincing, "but I'll get unjammed on my own. This is just a
little bump in the road. I'll get past it. I'm sure it's nothing."

Cor
held up his hands and backed off. 'Single-minded' was putting it mildly, he
decided. 'Obsessive' was a better word.

Felix
ran grease covered fingers through his hair again, making it stick up in
odd directions. "Look, could you just-" He waved a hand at the
opposite wall of the small, hot room, "-check the compressor while I make
sure we're just not low on coolant?"

Cor
bobbed his head. "Sure thing. Here." He reached down and pulled a
good sized wrench out of the toolbox at his feet. "You'll need that to get
the top open."

Felix
caught the wrench clumsily before stalking off to the dim, cramped area on the
other side of the engine housing, out of Cor's line of sight.

The
mechanic shot Felix's lanky form a worried look before he disappeared
entirely. The human was brilliant, that much had been obvious to the old
Hybridian the day Felix had come onboard eight months ago, but Cor still worried for
him. He was only twenty-four.
Too young to be locked up in his quarters all the time pouring over that one,
stubborn equation.

Cor
shook his head when he was sure Felix wouldn't see. Barely more than a kid, he thought as he started up the
maintenance scan and then opened up a control panel where it sat just below its
monitor partner. He'sstill young even by Man's standards. Should be out livin' it up at some fancy university instead'a
wanderin' around out here all on his lonesome.

He
knew why Felix hadn't though. Fact was, he was too smart for his own people.
University, even at the master level, would have bored him out of his mind
within a week.

Maybe
if he'd tried one of the off world schools, Cor thought as he took off his own protective gloves and crouched down to peer into the unlit recesses of the control box. Squinting slightly, he directed his static field into the wire junction
that connected with the compressor that sat farther back in the metal housing. His bioelectric energy jumped eagerly into the conductive metal and raced down the
different wires and connections that linked to the Helix's ventilation systems, giving Cor a good look at how the electricity in the ship's internals was flowing.

Maybe if he'd gone somewhere that would'a challenged him mentally - like with those brainiacs on Avicii or even the
Royal University back home - maybe then the kid would be off scrawlin' his
numbers on a string'a holoboards under a foreign sun instead of fussin' with
temperamental wiring out here in the boonies.

But
then, with his mother dying and all, Felix hadn't shown much interest in
anything but scrap wiring and getting himself as far from home as a propulsion
system would take him.

Cor frowned, bushy eyebrows creasing
low over his eyes. He knew precious little about Felix's life before the
captain had hired him on for the Helix's
current run to White Sails, and most of what he'd learned had been repeated by Tori, Felix's only other friend and the only other Earthling
onboard. But with his mom dying of cancer and his dad AWOL since Felix was five,
Cor could see how the Earthling might not want to stick around the homestead.

Well it's not like he woulda exactly enjoyed himself at the RU. Cor's thoughts were
tainted with bitterness. Not with those
cybernetic superiorists runnin' their mouths off against any race that doesn't
have a secondary skeleton.

"Bucketheads," he grumbled to
himself with a severe frown. "We're
the freaky ones out n'about in the universe, don't they know that? How many
other techno-organic races are out there asides us? Precious few, that's fer
sure. And cyborgs don't count. They
ain't born with oil in their veins like us."

He
thumped his broad chest even though, technically, Hybridians didn't have oil in
their veins either, just a naturally occurring metal-based conductor that
transmitted the electrical current generated by their secondary skeleton – what
they called their static fields – but it was such a close thing that 'oil' was
a simpler way to explain it.

Cor
snorted and rolled his eyes in a purely human gesture he'd picked up from their young co-pilot, Tori. "Bucketheads," he grumbled again under his breath, but
was quickly distracted as his static field began to send him data from his
inspection of the ship's circuits. The information streamed through the current
that extended around him like an unseen bubble before entering his body via the
oil that flowed along his more organic blood. The data arrowed straight for the
set of thick, fibrous cords that sat above his spinal cord and the top third of
his spine – the trademark secondary skeleton his race was known for.

The
unique double spine downloaded the sensory information from his field and decoded
it into understandable information faster than an AI computer brain could unzip a
file. Faster than a human could even comprehend.

"All's
A-okay over here!" Cor shouted so Felix could hear him over the working
noise of the engine room. He pulled his static field back from the ship's
circuitry and put his heavy worker's gloves back on. "Nuthin' overly
important is broke, so it must be some minor glitch in the secondary systems."

Felix
sighed as he came around the other side of the engine casing. “Great,” he
grumbled, idly whacking the wrench head against the wall and getting a sharp clang in return. The pipe he'd struck
reverberated, the sound bouncing around the small space as Felix dropped the
wrench on top of the other tools, snapped the lid closed, and sat
down on top of it. The seat was low enough that his knees stuck out slightly,
vaguely stork-like. “That'll take twice as long to fix.”

Cor
huffed a sour agreement as he came and sat down next to the kid, stretching his
shorter legs out in front him when his aging knees refused to bend. “Ol’ Scales won’t
want us shuttin’ anything down while there’re passengers on board,” he said in
agreement as he leaned against the heated wall. “We’ll probably have to
wait until we get ta White Sails afore we can even get a proper look at what’s
goin’ on in there.”

Felix
nodded, not really listening. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “sure thing.”

Cor
waited for the engineer to say something - maybe about the perfectionist nature
of their Skalorian captain or how he would wring Cor’s neck
with his lengthy tail if he heard the old man calling him 'Scales' again. Or, better yet,
maybe the real source of his withdrawn mood; say, just for example, what it was
about his equation that was driving him to such distraction.

He looked down at the deck plating beneath his scuffed boots. The Hybridian had little hope
for that last one. He was one of the few on the Helix 7 that had actually gotten to know Felix since he’d joined them
and he recognized the signs. Felix was starting to enter a bad place. Last time
he'd started acting like this, he'd locked himself in his room until he'd
sorted out his 'kinks'.

Three days, Cor remembered worriedly. It took him three days to figure it out an'
he was so focused on that stupid stretch a'math that he didn't sleep or eat the
whole time. Looked like an unshaved ghoul when we finally got him outta there.

The old mechanic rubbed at
the back of his neck, static field tingling with unease. Twenty-four obsessive genius, he thought grimly as he
watched Felix out of the corner of his eyes. Yep, I'd say he's due for a mental breakdown right about
now.

His
static field contracted worriedly at the thought as he eyed his young friend.
"Ya sure yer doin' all right there, kid?" he dared to ask.

"Fine,"
Felix mumbled without looking up at him. His fingers were starting to twitch
erratically, like he was writing something in his head and his hands were trying to catch up.

"Because,"
Cor went on, wishing the kid would actually hear what he was saying. "You
know I'm right here if ya need somethin'-”

Felix
abruptly moved, dropping his head and expelling a sigh before straightening
back up again. "I'm fine, Cor.
I'm just stuck is all. I'll sort it out," he snapped and abruptly headed
for the open door.

He
stopped when he reached the door and pulled the connection cable still plugged
into his datapad up after him, twisting it around the clunky body of the
pad before tucking it back in its sling. "Since the captain's not going to let
us reboot anything, you mind if I go to my workroom? Might as well try and get
something done, right?" He shrugged one lanky shoulder, free hand splayed
at his side in a 'well what else have I got to do around here?' gesture.

Cor
hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah, all right," he caved. Maybe the kid
just needed a good stretch of time to work through this knot in the numbers.
Every engineer hit snags after all, and it wasn't like Cor had never
overreacted before either. Those three days Felix had locked himself away had
him spooked, Cor didn't mind admitting.

Felix
brightened only slightly as he back-stepped towards the open door. "Great,
I'll see you and Tor at dinner then."

He
waved once before turning around and hanging a left to his workshop down
the hall.

Cor
watched him go, tiny sparks appearing in the air around him as anxiety made his
static field pop restlessly.

"Right,"
he mumbled, a large sigh leaving his square nose. "See ya there."

Ruby O'Keeffe:
I'm only a few chapters in and I love this book! The writing style fits the setting and theme perfectly, and the descriptions of the characters, setting and more are beautiful! I would love to read to read more from this author!

Drew C. Elyon:
I've only read one chapter so far, but from what I've seen, this is steampunk at its best. The narrative flows so beautifully I could envision every scene in an almost cinematic fashion. I believe in the complexity of simplicity, and this story has that in its descriptions.

James Lawson:
I enjoyed this so much I immediately bought (and read) the sequel from Amazon.ca - and am eagerly awaiting the third installment.Since this is a review and not a synopsis, I'll share my impressions rather than write out a condensed version of the plot.There were enough plot twists and turns to ke...

Diana Chernenko:
I liked this book. Even if the idea of book isn't so new. "girl that should save the world with her super powers." sometimes I thought that she is too overpowered, and I was sometimes really annoyed by her, and felt sorry for her friends and Derek. Moreover I didn't like first chapters when the...

Lauren Kabanyana:
It's simply amazing, the story is touching and has you captivated while reading! I loved it! Would read it over and over again. I applaud the way this book was able to evoke a mixture of feelings. I felt everything the two main characters felt from the start to end, i would recommend this novel t...

Keith:
UNSCRIPTED is an excellent, well-told story of a woman who tries to find herself after the painful break-up of her marriage. She does so,intriguingly, by going to Cambodia to help supervise the first free election after the brutal reign of Pol Pot and The Killing Fields. I was drawn to this story...

nehmeyasmin:
It was the most heart warming but heart breaking story ever and I want the next part right away. It kept me hooked until the end even though there were a couple mistakes it was truly amazing. I think this book could go far if it wanted to

Ding Fernando:
very nice read.so realistic you can hardly put it down,i really like the character so human despite posessing immortality and eternal youth.though i would prefer a better ending..i still love this novel and i am recommending it to all sci fi fans to give it a try .you will love it too!!

jennywren313:
This is a throughly engaging and ripping yarn ... I loved the writing style .. the flashbacks so real that the current moments forgotten .. it is a great read and one I would recommend to anyone that enjoys a bit of a mystery .. wrapped up in a story .. carried by well described characters .. and...

sujitha nair:
What's so distinct about this story was that it could easily be real.Praveena can be your classmate, neighbor or that girl you saw at the coffee shop today. The important decisions she makes and the dilemmas she faces, remind us of our own twisted lives.

JWalker:
I loved this story from start to finish! It flows at a really nice pace and the story world feels so real. The fight sequences are a treat especially when Isanfyre is training to become a warrior. I found the names really cool and thankfully easy to pronounce. Personally I have always struggled w...

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